Health Insurance Industry: An Oxymoron

My thoughts lately:

In order for an industry to exist, there has to be some sort of a capitalist notion that there exist a capital in the form of a tradable commodity. As it is traded, it gains more and more capital and as it gains more and more capital, it becomes more and more desirable, etc. Wealth is created for those who trade in it. Hence, the CEOs and the stockholders are becoming rich. This is the typical capitalist theory, the theory based upon capital and the desirability of that capital.

I read somewhere in a blog about someone talking about the health insurance industry. Now that assumes that this industry deals with some sort of commodity that is tradable. I am beginning to wonder, if your and my health a commodity that can be bought and sold for someone else's profit?

The way the insurance industry is run right now it is. However, it is desirable only as long as your health is good. You are dropped as soon as your health starts to deteriorate. Therefore, in this capitalist model, your health is something that can become completely detached from your own self where your body becomes only the vessel of the abstract health that is traded by the insurance industry.

The question then is: can you be detached from your health? Are you a commodity to such a degree that you can be parceled into different parts, corporeal or not, and sold and traded as if they were commodities?

In my opinion, it is absurd to think that your health is something that can be traded, sold, commodified by other people for their profit, not yours. As soon as your health loses its status as a desirable capital, then you find yourself dropped by the industry. Your health, as long as you have it is commodified to the degree that when you do need the insurance, for which you pay, it loses its value as a commodity. You lose control of your commodity, it is at the hands of those whose sole interest is to make money any way possible.

It is time to fundamentally rethink about health insurance. First of all, we need to change our opinion that it is an industry. The notion that it is an industry is a fundamentally wrong. "Health insurance industry" itself is misnomer. Health is not a commodity. It cannot and ought not to be commodified.

Therefore, it seems to me that we need to come away from the thinking that health insurance is an industry. It is not an industry because health is not a commodity. Your health should not be used for profit.

You'd Better Listen! It's Our President Talking!

My children came home yesterday with permission slips from their school that, when signed and returned, will allow students to opt out of listening to our president tell them stay in school and study hard.

I find it utterly incredible that there is even a controversy over this since it is a positive message that students need to hear again and again. And what better person to bring that message to them than the person who has so immensely benefited from education and who also happens to be the President of the United States?

So, listen to the president and watch the following video. Enjoy!